Mardi Humphreys

Common Cents

Photo by Public Domain Pictures from Pexels

This is the time of year we think about buying decorations, fancy food, party clothes, and gifts. So it’s also a good time to think about some financial fundamentals to keep our long-term savings goals on track.

1. Allowance

Treat yo’ self is real, but if it puts us in debt we aren’t doing it right. We can set money aside from every paycheck for splurging. When the mood strikes, we only spend the money we saved for the binge. We can also keep a change jar or piggy bank. Since we pay for most purchases with a card these days this style of saving takes a long time, but delayed gratification is not always a bad thing.

2. Pay with cash

I know this sounds archaic and inconvenient, but that’s kinda the point. If we have to literally pull bills out of our wallets, count them, then hand them over to the cashier at Bath and Body Works, we see and feel how much those buy-three-get-three-free body care items REALLY cost us. There’s just something about handing our hard earned money over to someone else that makes us feel the loss more intensely.

3. Write it down

The point isn’t to change our habits, but to identify them. If we use our debit or credit cards to purchase everything we buy and pay bills online through our banks, we can just look at our queues for a month and see where all our money goes. From this data, we can make decisions regarding what changes we want to make. Too many trips to Starbucks? Maybe it’s time to take coffee from home with us to the office. If Starbucks is a priority, where else could we cut back?

4. Strategic direct deposit

We can usually assign percentages of our paycheck to different accounts. If we have an interest bearing savings account, we can divert a percentage of our wages to it every pay period. We don’t miss that money if we don’t have easy access to it.

5. Be generous

If we’re generous with our time, talent, and treasure, that generosity comes back to us and usually not in the way we expect. Paying for our friend’s lunch doesn’t mean she will pay the next time. It could be that your daughter buys you the sweater you had your eye on at Target. Now is a good time to ask friends and family if they’d like us to donate to their favorite charity as their present this year. If so, we may want to do a little research to ensure our financial gifts go to the group the organization says they’re helping. (E.g., if we donate to an organization that helps people, will our money go to the people or to administrative fees?)

With a little common sense and a bit of self-control, we can reach our savings goals without feeling deprived.

Do you trick yourself into being frugal? Please share some tips in the comments section below.

Royal Pain

Ever wonder what happens when a mean girl grows up? She becomes a Queen Bee (QB): a female leader insecure in her position who treats her female employees worse than she treats her male employees. Obsessed with maintaining her authority, she views other women as competitors and excludes them from high profile projects that could advance their careers. What does a QB act like? How do you deal with one? Short of a giant flyswatter, how do we eliminate QBs?

Beehavior (see what I did there?)

A QB:

Dismisses our ideas without discussion
Interrupts us mid-sentence
Excludes us from meetings
Chips away at our confidence (e.g., yells at us for not performing a task we weren’t aware we’re supposed to do)
Undermines us behind our backs (e.g., gossips about us to colleagues)
QBs are effective because they prey on unique female vulnerabilities men don’t usually think about (e.g., not smart enough, dressing inappropriately, too emotional, not committed to our careers because we’re mothers, etc.)

Until there are as many female leaders as male, freezing out the competition is an effective survival strategy.

Remove the Sting

A young woman starting out her career naturally looks around the organization for a successful mature woman to emulate. The chosen mentor may see this as competition and in the vein of keep your friends close and your enemies closer, actively subvert the younger woman’s efforts to advance her career. If we aspire to be leaders, we have to stand up for ourselves. Note instances where the QB treats us differently than our male coworkers and ask why. Let’s politely ask for details on our job performances and in what areas she’d like us to improve. When she gets mean, we’ll keep our composure and take her assessment respectfully. We’ll admire her work, tell her we want to be as good at our jobs as she is at hers, and ask her to share the secret of her success.

Extinction

In the good news department, this article says there aren’t as many QBs as we think. The assumption there is something in women’s genes that make us unable to get along with each other is a myth. QBs are the result of inequality and gender discrimination. Women protect our territory because we’re the non-dominant group, not because we’re women. As more women reach higher levels of management, being punished (e.g., low job performance ratings, not getting promoted) for promoting diversity by elevating other women, should decrease.

Learning to Fly

Women should mentor other women and publicly celebrate other women’s accomplishments. When a woman behaves like a man, let’s stop judging her so harshly. Let’s call both men and women out on the language they use to describe our female coworkers. For example, in a recent interview, Taylor Swift pointed out, “…A man does something, it’s strategic; a woman does the same thing, it’s calculated.” So let’s watch our mouths; no trash talking other women. People view us as women, not as professionals. Let’s use that bias to our advantage. Let’s embrace other women on our teams, work hard together, support each other, and deliver the goods. Let’s earn reputations for increasing revenue and giving excellent customer service. When we’re in positions to promote women, let’s do it. Let’s create a sisterhood of success. When women have each other’s backs, we all rise.

Have you ever experienced Queen Bee Syndrome at work? What did you do to change the relationship? Please share your story in the comments section.

Just Adjust

Tenacity is when we try something, but if it doesn’t work we try different ways to achieve the same goal. Here’s why and how we should develop tenacity on the job.

Why:

Tenacity is a hard ability to train, so tenacious employees earn the respect of both their managers and peers. Workers willing to do what is necessary for the business to endure downturns are the ones who get to keep their jobs. Successful people are tenacious. Doing hard things and seeing them through to completion gives us confidence. We develop mental toughness and keep going when others quit. Most people expect Plan A to work every time, but how often does that really happen? There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Let’s be unafraid to go back to a failed Plan A and revise it to make a Plan B, Plan C, or however many letters it takes to overcome the setback. Let’s learn how to not make the same mistake twice. Making new mistakes is much more fun.

How:

Perceive failures as experiments: When we think we’ve spent all our energy and ideas on overcoming our obstacle, let’s give it one more try and change the input to achieve a better outcome. Often, the answer lies just beyond what we think we’re capable of.
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals: We’ll filter our responsibilities through them. E.g., if we want to be the team’s SME for JavaScript, how do the tasks on our daily to-do lists get us closer to that goal?
Identify a coworker as a friendly rival. We’ll find someone who is competing for the same promotion or the same client, etc., and use her as the bar against which we measure our work. Does she know Excel better than us? We can take an online class (many are free with a library card) to increase our knowledge. I call competing with someone who is on my team “coopetition.” (Think Group Round during Hollywood Week on American Idol). We strive to outperform this person because we admire her success. We can use this as motivational fuel to course correct when we’re struggling. This study says we succeed when our rival succeeds. We can learn from her mistakes as well as build on her successes.
Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Let’s hang out with tenacious people: professional groups, friends, family, and people with our job title from other companies. We can also read biographies of tenacious people and study what they did.
Tenacious people are comfortable with being uncomfortable. If our fear of failure is holding us back, let’s do something about it. Let’s sift through the symptoms to get to the root. (Journaling may help us see it easier.) Then take baby steps every day to overcome it.

Tenacity comes through practice. The bad news is, this means facing adversity over and over again. The good (?!) news is, life gives us plenty of adversity to practice with.

Please share your story of how you’re developing tenacity in the comments section below.

There’s Nothing More Scary Than Losing Your Mind

Have you ever been gaslighted at work? The term, taken from the title of a 1938 play, refers to the process of someone slowly driving someone else crazy through psychological manipulation. It’s a specific pattern of emotional abuse and is considered workplace harassment. When it’s done by your manager, it’s very similar to Corporate Stockholm Syndrome. Since the manipulation is customized to the target, there’s no one-size-fits-all description, but here’s what gaslighting could look like coming from a coworker.

Behavior:

They consistently manipulate your perception of reality and refuse to talk about it (e.g., “I didn’t touch you inappropriately. I don’t have to listen to this.”).
They break the rules and claim you’re the one who broke them (e.g., you catch them lying and they blame you for forcing them to lie).
They withhold information you need (e.g., “The client meeting is today. Did you forget again?”).
They are ambitious, smart, critical, and have low self-esteem.
They can’t handle negative feedback, jockey for leadership positions on the team, and sabotage your work (e.g., change deadlines after you start working on the project).
They make passive aggressive comments that come off as funny.
They are charming and have great people skills.
They are office gossips; getting others to engage so they have more dirt on more coworkers.
They take credit for your ideas and when you call them on it, they say they had to tweak your idea to make it work, so it was no longer yours.

Why it happens:

They see you as competition. To get ahead, they gaslight you to make you look incompetent to management or to get you fired.
They want you to behave the way they choose while avoiding responsibility for their manipulation.
Controlling you makes them feel powerful.

Signs:

By its very nature (done slowly and sneakily), it can be hard to identify.

They make you doubt your skills, intelligence, and/or your sense of reality.
They give you backhanded compliments (e.g., “Great job on the presentation. I thought for sure you’d choke.”).
If you feel paranoid all the time (not just at work), confused (second-guessing your memory), too sensitive, overreactive, guilty, and/or depressed, you may be a victim of gaslighting.

What you should do:

Document everything; seeing the abuse in words helps you decide if gaslighting is actually happening (i.e., you are not imagining it) and it gives you proof to take to HR if you choose to.
Keep gaslighting emails they sent you in a folder under your inbox and forward them to your private email account, so you have a backup. If your company has access to your work email, just keep the evidence in your private email account.
Write down descriptions of inappropriate interactions as soon as they happen before you forget what was said, done, and where it happened. Email these documents to both your work and private accounts so they will be time and date stamped.
Ask your coworkers if it’s happening to them too. If so, ask them to document their interactions also. HR is more likely to believe you if you can prove the gaslighter is treating coworkers the same way they’re treating you.
When meeting with the gaslighter, have at least one other person in the meeting to verify what was said.
Call the gaslighter out on their behavior and words. Know your worth and expertise and hold your boundaries.
Remind yourself that you are smart and capable.

Please share your experience of being gaslighted in the comments section below.

Funding Your Financial Future

Investing. Just typing the word overwhelms me. I don’t begin to understand the process of how to buy stocks, which bonds to purchase, or what it means to my financial future when the Dow dips. Do you feel the same? I’ve done some research and found a few things you can do to supplement your retirement savings.

Pay loans off quickly

The faster you pay off debt, the sooner you can stash money into a retirement plan. Student loans, car payments, mortgage, credit cards, etc. all keep your money tied up. When you get “free” money: a cash bonus, cash gift for you birthday, tax refund, etc. use it to make an additional payment on your loan. Since you weren’t counting on that money, you won’t miss it.

Invest in your company’s 401k

If your company offers matching contributions, contribute the maximum amount you can afford. It’s free money. Take full advantage of that benefit. Start as early in your employment as possible. If you’re concentrating on paying off debt, make the minimum contribution. When you are debt free, increase your 401k contributions by the monthly amount you were paying your creditor.

Open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA): If you are eligible, this is the traditional route. I thought an IRA was an investment, but it’s actually a savings account with tax breaks attached. It’s unwise to rely solely on a pension and Social Security to fund your retirement. Every day people are celebrating their 100th birthdays. Plan accordingly.

Invest in real estate

If you’re a gambler, you may enjoy real estate crowdfunding. Which is essentially pooling your money with other people’s money to purchase properties that someone else manages and or sells. It’s not a huge return on your investment, but you may like it better than stock trading.

Use a micro-investment app

The concept of rounding up the amount of a purchase to the nearest dollar, then diverting that difference into an investment account is brilliant. Acorns, Stash, Robinhood, and WiseBanyan have figured out how to do it. Using this method of investment won’t provide huge returns, but if you keep spare change in a jar on the kitchen counter, it’s not working for you. You may as well have a little bit of money making you a little bit more money.

Get a side gig

This can be as intense as working retail or as laid back as dog walking. You can work for someone else, like a big box store. You can work for someone else while setting your own schedule, like being a ride share driver. Maybe it’s time to launch your own business, like online guitar lessons. If you have a skill you can monetize, you can put that money in your retirement fund. As an additional benefit, you set yourself up for having a stream of revenue when you retire from full time employment. Exploring your options while working full time sets you up for life beyond the daily grind.

There are numerous ways you can save for retirement. Investing can be as complicated or as easy as you want to make it. The important thing is to do something to financially provide for your future.

What kind of investing do you do? Please share in the comments section.

Corporate Stockholm Syndrome is Real

While researching last week’s post, I stumbled across something I’d never heard of before: Corporate Stockholm Syndrome (CSS). It’s when an employee becomes deeply loyal to an employer who is abusive (e.g., yells at employees, expects employees to work long hours, requires employees to handle his personal errands). For a good example of this, watch the movie (or read the book), The Devil Wears Prada. Stockholm Syndrome is a phrase first coined in the 1970s to refer to a hostage who felt empathy toward her captor because even though she was abused, the captor was also the source of food, water, shelter, etc. Since a manager can also be viewed as a source of those things, when the manager is abusive, the employee experiences CSS.

1. Problems

As employees, we get a great deal of self-esteem from our jobs. This becomes problematic if our manager habitually mistreats us. An employee suffering from CSS is emotionally attached to the company and puts its needs before her own; even if that means she gets traumatized in the process. The employee is micromanaged. Her work is scrutinized and, if it displeases the manager, criticized. When she wants to advance within the company, especially to another manager’s team, her manager refuses to allow the move.

2. Symptoms

Physical: headaches, insomnia, fatigue
Mental/Emotional: fear, distrust, anger, shame, denial she’s being mistreated.
Company: the manager isolates the employee from upper management, coworkers verbally abuse each other, the company offers fringe benefits that promote loyalty to the company

3. Results

The employee is stressed out, her reputation possibly tarnished by her manager, and afraid of what will happen if she complains to Human Resources. She thinks telling someone will get back to the manager and make things worse (e.g., lose her job or not get promoted). In 2017, the Workplace Bullying Institute discovered more than 60 million employees in the US had been affected by bullying or abuse on the job. CSS is contagious. Coworkers who witness the abuse may not speak up for fear they’ll be mistreated too.

4. Solutions

It’s important to maintain healthy relationships outside of the office. Get a reality check from one of yours. Ask, “Do you see this happening?” “Is this normal?” If you’re a victim of CSS, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to change your manager’s behavior. Your best alternative is to get a new job. (That sentence makes it sound easy. I know it’s not.) Look for a company that rewards supervisors for promoting high performers. While you’re searching, take time to heal. Write down your achievements. Seek validation and encouragement from friends and family. Consider visiting a psychologist who does cognitive behavioral therapy to undo the thinking patterns created by the abuse. Be good to yourself outside of work: exercise, use a meditation app, plan something to look forward to (e.g., a concert, a vacation, the next five books you want to read). Be as good to yourself as you would be to a friend who is going through these circumstances.

Have you ever been the victim of CSS? Please share your story in the comments section below.

Balancing Act

During a conference I attended last week, we did a networking exercise similar to the Reciprocity Ring Adam Grant uses in his classes at Wharton. Most of us requested referrals, but one woman asked for tips on work-life balance. I admired her courage. We usually act like we either have it all together or wear burnout like a badge of honor. I promised to do some research. Here’s what I found.

Contributing Factors to Work-life Imbalance:

1. Household Chores

Women do more household chores than men no matter what their age, income level, workforce responsibilities, or if there are children to parent. If you’re tired of carrying the bulk of the homework, talk to your partner about traditional gender roles and work out a fair division of labor.

2. Working Remotely

If you don’t have to be on-site to do your job, working from home allows flexibility but also usually means working longer and odd hours and sets the expectation from your boss that it’s acceptable. American wages are about the same today as they were 40 years ago. Technology has produced knowledge workers, but businesses have yet to figure out how to measure their productivity. We’re still measuring it by hours on time sheets and presence in the office. So if you work remotely, you feel you have to be connected 24/7 to demonstrate productivity.

3. Your Mate’s Schedule

Women partnered to men who work long hours (50 or more per week) have significantly higher perceived stress and significantly lower work-life balance than women partnered to men who work a normal full-time week (35–49 hours).

Possible Solutions:

1. Flip the Script

Stop thinking of work as negative and home as positive. There’s nothing wrong with loving your job. It’s just that too much of a good thing still causes burnout. Alternate work schedules are becoming more common. Can you choose a schedule that allows you to balance home and work? You have to set and protect boundaries, but you would control them.

2. Embrace the Imbalance

Using time-saving hacks aren’t working any more. Imbalance is a challenge for a household where both people have jobs and no one has the exclusive responsibility to manage the home. Give each other some grace. Communicate when you have an impending work deadline signaling that your chores at home will have to wait. On the other hand, let your colleague know you will answer his email after you get home from your daughter’s basketball game.

3. Leadership

If the organization’s leaders don’t practice work-life balance, e.g., emailing at 9:00PM, calling into meetings from vacation, etc., then employees will follow suit because it shows dedication and may lead to promotion. Managers should model the behavior the company wants cultivated. Supervisors should take a lunch hour, go on vacation, and leave the office for the day at a reasonable hour. Then they should talk openly about doing all those things with their teams and encourage them to do the same.

How do you balance work with your personal life? Please share your story in the comments section below.

Workforce 2.0

If you had twins, a boy and a girl, who started kindergarten this year, they’ll graduate high school in 2032. Being the forward thinker you are, what skills should you teach now to prepare them to join the workforce? Should you teach your daughter the same skills as your son? I found five skills that give both boys and girls a head start in the workforce.

1. Social skills

The social skills children learn in kindergarten can determine whether they end up in the workforce or prison. (No pressure, Mom and Dad.) Model the behavior you want them to exhibit (e.g., control yourself when you’re angry). To develop social skills, they have to be around their peers. Arrange play dates, take them to story time at the library, put them in children’s programs at your church. Sometimes you need to be present to observe and correct their behavior, and sometimes you need to be absent so they can test what they’ve learned.

2. Chores

Ask them to empty smaller waste cans throughout your house into your kitchen trashcan then have them accompany you when taking it out. When they’re older, they can assume the whole process. The same applies to cleaning their rooms, doing laundry, emptying the dishwasher, etc. When they help you, they get used to collaborating which is a skill they’ll need for future group projects in school, playing team sports, and eventually on the job. It’s helpful to praise their efforts and not their outcomes (e.g., first praise them for putting their plates in the dishwasher, then ask them to rinse them first next time). This instills a growth mindset which is crucial for success in the workforce.

3. Communication

Teach them how to translate emotions into words instead of acting out (e.g., Your child throws a toy because he’s frustrated. Ask him why he threw the toy, then help him find the words to express the emotion.). You also want to teach fundamental skills like making eye contact, saying please, thank you, and sorry, and listening without interrupting.

4. Decision Making

Let them choose what clothes to wear. If she wants you to decide for her, pull out two or three outfits and have her choose one. Let them choose their friends. Only intervene if the friend is a bad influence (e.g., a bully). Don’t snowplow parent. Prepare your child for the road; don’t prepare the road for your child (e.g., Did she leave her reading book at home? Don’t take it to school for her.).

5. How to Fail

Creative problem solving and critical thinking are the top two skills employers want. When they’re about to have a non-catastrophic fail, let it happen. Then frame it as a learning opportunity. Help them figure out why they failed and what they can do to prevent failing that same way next time (e.g., You’ve told him three times to put his dirty clothes in his laundry basket. He left his favorite shirt on the floor and now he wants to wear it to school, but can’t because it has a stain on it. Help him figure out a trigger he can create to remind himself to put that shirt in his laundry basket.).

Do you agree with this list? What skills do you think the workforce of 2032 will need? Please share in the comments section below.

Give Me Some Credit

Back in the good old days of easy credit, it was common practice to have cards from all your favorite stores and two or three multi-use cards (e.g., Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc.). It was also common to spend to the cards’ maximum limits, but only make the minimum monthly payments. We told ourselves we were building a good credit history. Then bad things happened in the US economy and wealth advisors urged us to cut up all our credit cards and pay for everything (even big ticket items like houses) with cash. Now the financial pendulum is swinging the other way again. There are several philosophies on managing credit cards. Here are three things I’ve learned.

1. Limits

The amount of credit cards you can have is limited only by the number for which you can qualify. Be aware that every time you apply for a new card, the issuer will check your credit score. If several companies do that in a short amount of time, your credit score could temporarily go down. I’m a primary and a backup kind of girl, so I have two multi-use cards and no store specific credit cards and Clark Howard approves. Which card I use depends on where I am (E.g., I have a card that rewards me for spending money on gas, groceries, and eating out).

2. Retail card

At the check out, cashiers ask me if I’m paying with their store’s credit card. When I say no, they ask if I want to open one and give me an elevator pitch of why I should: I’ll save $X on this purchase, X% on future purchases, earn points to get discounts on future purchases, and receive offers in my email. Since everyone’s situation is different, you may benefit from a store credit card. I avoid them because they make me want to spend money unnecessarily. Here’s a good pros and cons article on store credit cards.

3. Payment

There is one best practice that hasn’t changed since I started using credit. Pay the current balance in full every month. We forget credit cards are loans. The financial institution issuing the card is lending us money. If we don’t pay back the full amount we borrowed by the deadline they set, we owe them interest and finance charges. That’s how they make money and that’s why they offer a minimum payment. The longer we carry a balance, the more we owe and the more money they make.

Navigating the waters of credit card use is treacherous. It’s so tempting to buy whatever we want, but just because we can doesn’t mean we should. You work hard for what you earn so stop and think. Will you be mad at yourself every time you use that $1599 Gaggia Accademia espresso machine because you could have used that credit to pay a mechanic to fix your car that just broke down? Know your limits and stick to them. If you can’t trust yourself to be responsible, leave the credit card at home.

What’s your take on how many and what type of credit cards to have? Please share in the comments section below.

Increase Your Stock Value

This white paper suggests corporations that have women in C-Suite positions experience higher stock values and greater profitability than corporations whose boards are all men. This study proposes there is no physical difference between male and female brains. Both resources imply cultural bias keeps women out of boardrooms. So here we are in 2019 still banging our heads against the Glass Ceiling. What steps can we take right now to break through? One is to develop leadership presence. It’s the secret sauce to obtaining executive and senior level positions and it consists of confidence, unique voice, and physical presence.

Confidence

Research shows men apply for jobs if they meet 60% of the qualifications. Women apply if we meet 100%. When we don’t get the job, women assume we aren’t good enough to get it, and men blame external circumstances. If you work in HR, analyze your organization for diversity then filter your results through your hiring process. What can you do to attract, hire, and promote under-represented groups? (E.g., women in entry level positions taking longer to get promoted than men hired for the same position at the same time.) Make unconscious bias conscious. If your company recruits more men than women, find out why. Hiring managers tend to recruit people they like and who are like them. Does your company need more female recruiters?

Unique Voice

Research reveals when women leaders exhibit traditionally male characteristics, like decisiveness and assertion, we are perceived as bossy and aggressive. On the other hand, when female leaders display traditionally feminine characteristics like being warm and nurturing, we are perceived as incompetent. The trick is to be both warm and competent. Women don’t have to mimic men to have an influential voice, but this is a slippery slope. As LeanIn.org tweeted, “We tend to underestimate women’s performance and overestimate men’s. Women get less credit for their accomplishments and more blame for mistakes. As a result, women have to work harder than men to prove that they’re qualified.” Since women are more likely to be given leadership roles in times of crisis, we get lots of practice using our unique voices.

Physical Presence

To break through the Glass Ceiling, women must get over risk aversion. To get what we want, we have to go after it. We can acknowledge to ourselves we’re afraid, but we have to proceed. True leaders are more afraid of the status quo than of taking risk. We can start by taking up as much physical space as possible when entering a room: stand tall, sit up straight, and make eye contact. These non-verbals telegraph we’re competent contributors. Respect is earned, not given; but we can act like we expect it. We need to pay attention to women beginning employment with our companies and actively advocate for them. We should be creative, innovative, and collaborative in forming sisterhoods in our organizations. We rise and fall together.

Do you have any suggestions how women can develop leadership presence? Please share them in the comments section below.